Fiji sent New Zealand home, Japan continued their fairytale run to the semi-finals and Britain edged Argentina amid the high drama of extra time as the inaugural Olympic sevens tournament got down to the final four on Wednesday.
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Hansen believes that if no global rugby was played during the Olympics, more worldwide players would take part in the Games.
“Everyone will come back and review the process and we’ll learn some lessons as we always do. A lot of boys are not playing sevens after this tournament, so it’s a bit like just having fun with your mates, I guess”. “It’s been hard for the players hasn’t it?” Some have chosen to go and some have chosen to stay, and that’s an option they’ve chose to make without the influence of Titch, or myself. It’s extremely hard. I think if they had a clear calendar before the Olympics when there wasn’t any test rugby you would see a lot more people wanting to go.
But his team’s run is further boosting rugby in his adopted country, which was already on cloud nine after their 15-man team’s famous win against South Africa in last year’s Rugby World Cup.
“At the same time, it emphasises the players’ thoughts about how they feel about the All Black jersey and for that matter their franchise”.
“A lot of guys made the decision because they wanted to stay and try win the championship with their franchises”.
Lemeki said Japan was taking an “if we lose, we lose, if we win, we win” attitude into each game. Get past the Pacific islanders and they would then face Great Britain or South Africa for the gold medal, which he thinks is now a perfectly realistic possibility.
Not content with upsetting sevens powerhouses New Zealand in the pool stage on Tuesday, the 10th-ranked Japanese knocked off world sevens series regulars Kenya in their final pool match and snatched victory over France with a last-gasp try on Wednesday.
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“To have all the injuries they’ve had they’ll want to know why, and they’ll rue their performance against Japan”, Hansen said.
